Ita Kā-Wīthōtihk Mīciwin – The Place Where There is an Abundance of Food

Devonn Drossel
Edmonton, AB

Size

24" x 14" x 4.5"

Medium

Size 10 and 11 seed beads, vintage paper flour bag, unframed

Settler colonial agriculture is often credited as the means by which Indigenous lands and territories were made plentiful and productive. In reality, it directly and often violently disrupted Indigenous communities, cultures, and foodways and decimated plant and animal populations. Antique flour bags symbolically represent literal products of the destruction, disruption, and erasure settler agriculture caused. By beading plants and animals important to many Indigenous communities onto this bag, such as corn, squash, buffalo, and beans, its meaning is obscured and transformed. What was first a symbol and tool of Indigenous erasure becomes a site of Indigenous representation instead.

Ita Kā-Wīthōtihk Mīciwin – The Place Where There is an Abundance of Food

Devonn Drossel
Edmonton, AB

About the artist
About the artist

Devonn Drossel
Edmonton, AB

Devonn Drossel (Métis) is a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta (MNA) and lives in Amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton) in Treaty 6 Territory. She learned to bead in Mohkinstsis (Calgary), and through her art practice seeks to contend with topics such as Métis kinship, food sovereignty, and the impacts of colonization on Indigenous foodways. Currently, she is a Master’s student at the University of Alberta in the Faculty of Native Studies researching urban Métis food practices and sovereignty.

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